A sign of the times

[bernardinho1961]

There is a myth that hordes of people are dying each day to come to the US. Sure, five years back, ten years back. Today Mexicans are returning to Mexico: if they have to be jobless, it's cheaper to be jobless in Mexico. The American dream is more a figment of the imagination than ever before; it's used by the US ruling class to mollify the rest of the country on how good they have it if foreigners are literally falling over themselves to cross the Rio Grande.

Do you have any evidence to substantiate your assertion regarding legal and illegal US immigration patterns as well as repatriation of Mexicans?

 

[bernardinho1961]

It might appear like that because you are living off borrowed money. Once the rest of the world stops lending you money your living standards will look a whole lot more like Argentina's.

I perceive Stella's question as just that - a question. As for me, I really have no insight or statistical data relative to the living standards of Argentines outside of BA and I have no data about BA or the US in general other than my limited personal observations. What I observe when I am in BA is that there is a lot of poverty and a large marginal middle class which manages to keep itself fed and clothed poorly with means for little else. My perception is that the poverty and marginal middle class existence is less prevalent in the US than it is in BA.

Whether this discrepancy in living standards, if accurately perceived by me, is attributable to Keynesian economic policy, Nixon going off the gold standard, Ford's Whip Inflation Now policies, Reaganomics, voodoo economics, trickle down theory economics, QE1, QE2, Peronismo, dollarization, the 2001 Argentine bond default, labor arbitrage by US internationals happy to profit from a cheap yuan, or a more effective tax collection system ...may be subject to dispute just as it is debatable exactly when and how severely the US will have to pay the piper for its failure to control spending relative to its income.
Nevertheless, just or not, it appears to me that the living standards are still better in the US for most than they are for most in Argentina.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Do you have any evidence to substantiate your assertion regarding legal and illegal US immigration patterns as well as repatriation of Mexicans?

You can read more here.

 

[bigbadwolf]

This is a more recent story.

 

[bernardinho1961]

This is a more recent story.

I do not find the linked article to be persuasive support, much less probabtive, of your assertion re Mexican immigration and repatriation..

 

[bernardinho1961]

You can read more here.

From a 2009 article:
"Despite the barrage of returns late in 2008, the jury is still out over whether the predicted mass exodus from the United States will occur -- and when...
And even if the pull factors drawing immigrants to the United States decline, many still expect that push effects could overpower its stalling economy. Drug violence is consuming parts of Mexico -- an escalating phenomenon that could spur more emigration in spite of the risks faced by migrants navigating a terrain that is increasingly controlled by Mexico's organized criminal gangs."

Hardly probative.

 

[bigbadwolf]

I do not find the linked article to be persuasive support, much less probabtive, of your assertion re Mexican immigration and repatriation..

Very good. You are right and I am wrong. Millions of Mexicans are continuing to pour into the US for the plentiful jobs available there.

 

[seventeen]

That's the way it used to be in the US, back in the days when you had an industry. Now it's all dismantled and the only thing you are exporting is debt. Contemporary domestic US living standards comes from buying cheap Chinese produced goods on down payment.

Agree totally, the manufacturing sector has gone downhill everywhere, not only in the US for that matter, I'm sure they've all realized this, probably they just can't do anything about it, China doing stuff for a bag of rice doesn't help either...